Ever have "one of those rides" ?

I had a nice route all planned I based on one I found on ridewithgps.com, had my maps all printed as I was not familiar with the far part of the route at all. Got a few miles down the road and found my main southbound passage was closed because of a charity run going on, so I had to reroute to a much busier street than I would of like. Then about 10 miles down the road I found that my maps had fallen out of my pocket, I weighed going back but decided to press on ahead anyway confident I could muddle my way through, I also did not want to add another 10 miles to my trip, and if I could even find them at all as the wind was pretty gusty and they might be in the next county by now.

I made it to the first loop of the trip and found the road interesting but with very rough tarmac. I got around the first half OK and came to the hill I was dreading. It was much worse then I expected, a real nasty (at least for me) upward arc that had a lot of blind spots, no shoulders at all and steep drop offs on either side. I eventually spun my way up it. Then the dogs started chasing me! 4 different properties had loose dogs that chased after me. Thankfully they didn't bite and dropped off after me shouting at them and reaching the end of their "domains". The worst one was a little chihuahua like beasty and while I wasn't afraid of it biting me (I don't know if it could even reach my it was so small) I was more worried about running the thing over or getting it caught in my spokes!

Then I got to a section that had me confused so I took the first turn instead of the second and ended up on the wrong road, I didn't realize it till after going down another large hill and found the pavement ended. To call what I was on a gravel road would be generous, more like small boulder road. It had 3 medium sized hills with washouts between them in the gullies. Even with my hybrids fairly wide tires I though I would lose it at any second. Surprisingly I powered through it and came back to a section of paved mile road I recognized after about a half mile and got back on track with my route.

I followed a road to it's termination to a busy main street, 5 and 6 lanes 45+ mph speed limit. I knew there was a sidewalk on the north side but I was on the south side. Sorry for those of you that hate riding sidewalks but these are generous 6 foot wide walks with NO pedestrian traffic and I felt it was too dangerous to travel on the road. I eventually made it across after waiting about 15 minutes for one of the few breaks in traffic. I made it across by walking (actually running) my bike across the road. The infamous craft fairs were in our county and traffic was especially heavy. The rest of the trip back home was uneventful buy I'm going to have to think long and hard before ever trying that route again, even with the correct route without the gravel road I traversed it was a real bear.

You can use Google Street View to scout out your next trip. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing.

Actually I find that ridewithgps does it all including street maps and satellite views. Although the maps don't print to well, so I export to a KML file and import it to Google maps and print from there. Scoping the ride wasn't the issue, losing the printed maps out of my pockets WAS.

we all have to start somewhere. The time will come when that simply doesn't happen anymore. A smart phone would be better than printed maps in most cases. And maybe one day you will learn you are traffic and have a place on the road, maybe not however.

Life is like riding a bicycle - in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving. ~Albert Einstein.

I had one of those trips. I love Google maps, but they are not instantly updated for new changes. Sometimes they show roads on a map that no longer exist, roads that you have no access to because they are blocked or gated, and roads that are nothing more than a weed grown dirt path. I take the back roads since there is next to no traffic, but it is easy to get lost when you lose your map to the wind and the battery dies on the phone. Once that happens I retrace my steps until I find something familiar.